We get up in the dark and because of a power cut we stumble around packing our bags at 4:30am. After a taxi ride to the bus station we board a bus and roll out of Dar es Salaam at 5:45, first light, on a 12 hour journey towards the border with Malawi. Its a private bus company so thankfully it only has four stops along the route and the journey is un-eventful. The highlight is driving through a National park and glimpsing a herd of Zebras, like cows in the UK, ha...

Dar es Salaam in the late 1930s This was my first glimpse of Dar es Salaam... a vast rippling blue-black lagoon and all around the rim of the lagoon there were pale-yellow sandy beaches almost white, and breakers were running up on to the sand, and coconut palms with their little green leafy hats were growing on the beaches, and there were Casuarine trees, immensely tall and breathtakingly beautiful... And then behind the Casuarinas was what seemed to me like a j...

Our train slowly rolled into Mumbai's main train station, the grand Victorian terminal, the busiest train station in the whole of Asia. We were two people out of an incredible average two and a half million passengers who pass through the station each day. At 6am the majority of the 16 million inhabitants of the city were still sleeping, and after an argument with our taxi driver about a new 50 rupee baggage fee he decided to apply, we drove easily through the st...

The hippies were responsible for first finding of Calangute Beach in Goa, although one or two of other beaches in Goa have now taken that badge, however, Calangute is all about package holiday Brits and Western tourists, bringing the British pub and a full English Breakfast. It was empty of tourists when we arrived, we had our hostel to our selves which always a bit spooky in a 'Shining' kind of way. Calangute beach was awash with Indian tourists of every age spl...

The following day we decided to head north to Panjim, the capital of Goa, its very Portuguese. When the British Raj gave India back to the Indians in 1947, the Portuguese decided to keep Goa. So, according to a man we met on the train the Indians flew a plane over Goa and dropped a single bomb, apparently the Portuguese reaction was, ok, its yours, keep it, and they surrendered Goa. The peoples faces are an interesting mixture of Indian and European, and everyone...